ON THE FARM: Hanson Farm in Bridgewater is third-generation family run

Thursday

Aug 30, 2012 at 12:01 AMAug 30, 2012 at 10:37 PM

This is the second of a two-part series on family-owned farms in the region.

Farmer Bob Hanson is a busy man.

“I hope you don’t mind if I eat my lunch while we talk,” Bob says with a smile as he directs me to a picnic table in between Hanson’s farmstand and Sugar Hill Dairy, which Bob, his brother, David and sister, Carol own on Pleasant Street (Route 104) in Bridgewater.

But after only a bite or two of his sandwich Bob is off his seat, back on his feet proudly showing off the farm and sharing some family history.

Alice Coyle

This is the second of a two-part series on family-owned farms in the region.

Farmer Bob Hanson is a busy man.

“I hope you don’t mind if I eat my lunch while we talk,” Bob says with a smile as he directs me to a picnic table in between Hanson’s farmstand and Sugar Hill Dairy, which Bob, his brother, David and sister, Carol own on Pleasant Street (Route 104) in Bridgewater.

But after only a bite or two of his sandwich Bob is off his seat, back on his feet proudly showing off the farm and sharing some family history.

Bob and Dave are the third generation of Hansons to run the farm, which has been family owned since 1937. Bob’s grandparents Helga and Ludwig Hanson came here from Sweden at the turn of last century and started a dairy farm on 84 acres of land, which spanned both sides of Route 104. Their son, John Hanson, carried on the business but after having some hip problems, he went to work for the postal service in 1970.

“He milked the cows in the morning and delivered the mail in the afternoon and worked about 20 hours a day on the farm,” Bob recalls. Bob’s mother Doris went to Bridgewater State to become a teacher but also started a small-scale produce business at the farm selling tomatoes and corn off a tractor and wagon from July to October.

In 1981, Bob and Dave were out of school and decided to incorporate and bring the dairy operation back to Hanson Farm.

“We bought a herd out of Easton and were milking as many as 50 cows,” says Bob. They sold the milk wholesale to Cumberland Farms and while Bob’s parents continued to sell produce at the roadside, most of the farmland was used to support the cows.

The dairy business is tough and milk prices were too low to make it lucrative. Like the Flint family in Mansfield, the Hansons decided to get out of the dairy business. In 1995 they sold the herd and expanded their produce production, building on what their mom Doris had started back in the 1970s. For three years, Bob and Dave sold vegetables out of an old chicken coop converted into a rustic farmstand that had no power. A grant in 1998 allowed the Hansons to build the current farmstand building and make it operational year round, although the season runs from May 1 to Christmas.

Today Hanson Farm grows 40 acres of vegetables, 22 acres of sweet corn and fields of flowers including zinnias, gladiolas and snapdragons blooming. Hanson Farm sits on 75 acres on Pleasant Street and rents another 200 acres of farmland around town. Corn and straw are the farm’s biggest and most lucrative crops. Hanson sells both feed hay and bales for construction sites.

The farmstand is a bustling business offering a variety of fresh produce including onions, corn, tomatoes, squash, eggplant, pumpkins and peppers. The shelves are also lined with jellies, jams and sweet honey produced by the farm’s 15 beehives. Hanson also sells its own farm fresh eggs.

Outside Sugar Hill Dairy, the ice cream shop the Hansons added in 2008 to help support the farm, families line up for scoops and licks of delicious ice cream on a sunny summer day. Richardson’s and Acushnet Dairies supply the ice cream and the Hansons supply the dairy farm atmosphere inviting families to file through the barn where they can feed the cows and chickens.

Hanson Farm has 200 chickens, and 11 cows — mixed breeds and brown Swiss — many of them as sweet and docile as a family dog.

“Each time we have a new calf, we have a contest to name it,” says Bob, noting that the baby cows are usually named after one of the ice cream shop employees who are mostly local high school kids, about the same age as Dave’s son Lucas.

Lucas works at the farm when he’s not in school, but Bob says he’s not sure his nephew will continue the family business. Bob’s son Brian works at the farm, but his other son Karl is pursuing a different career.

“Our kids see us working seven days a week, 365 days a year,” Bob says. “Kids don’t want to do that.”

Bob says he would like to keep the business in the family operating as a farm, but “if the boys aren’t interested,” he hopes to sell with development restrictions so the land will remain open space.

But retirement is still a ways down the road for Bob, who still hasn’t finished his sandwich but is eager to take a ride through the fields.

We pass by row after row of green leaves – squash, peppers, eggplant plants — thriving during what has been a hot, dry summer thanks to the irrigation system fed by the farm’s four ponds.

The ATV jerks to a stop and Bob is out in an instant, plucking three onions – yellow, white and red — from the field and handing them to me to take home. As we pass the corn field, he points to the yellow balls with eyes hanging above the stalks to scare off the destructive red winged blackbirds who can “destroy an acre of corn in a half-hour,” Bob says. The birds nest in the swamp on the farm and then fly into the field where they peck into the ripe ears of corn.

Muskrats are another menace to corn, breaking off the ripe corn stalks with their teeth.

“Are you allergic to bees,” Bob asks as we pass the pond where he keeps baitfish.

“No….but…” I stammer, eliciting a chuckle from Bob.

“Don’t worry, we won’t get too close to the hives,” jokes Bob, who has been beekeeping for 20 years. “We sell a lot of honey,” he says.

Heading into the fall, pumpkins and decorative straw, hay bales and corn stalks from the eight acres of silage corn will fill the farmstand and be sold to about 50 retail outlets in the area. Hanson Farm also sells firewood and Christmas trees brought in from tree farms in New Hampshire and Ashfield, Mass.

The days are long in every season, and the work is hard, but “rewarding too,” Bob says.